The Browning Version (1951)

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Michael Redgrave's performance is excellent in this film. I thought he played the unemotional, cuckolded husband perfectly throughout. I also enjoyed Wilfrid Hyd-White's comical performance (which is identical to his enjoyable performance in The Third Man).I like low-key films with plain, simple, un-flashy directing styles and Anthony Asquith's simple 'point & shoot' directing technique fitted the story perfectly.Other performances were not so good, often being a bit too OTT (I'm thinking mainly of the man having the affair with Redgrave's wife and some of the school boys).Overall, the film was enjoyable, though I don't feel it has any repeat-viewing value. I would have given it a higher score but the last 20 minutes or so became a bit too saccharine for me. I don't know if Terrence Rattigan wrote this from personal experience but the ending certainly felt like it was a bit of wish fulfilment and I found the excessive applause at the end of Redgrave's speech inauthentic. Also, the film was a bit too biased to be really exceptional. It was very much from the POV of Redgrave's character and very much against his wife but I do not feel we understood her character enough, since her background and reasons for her behaviour (though briefly touched upon by Redgrave late in the film) was not really explored. So it was a bit too biased in trying to make us sympathetic to Redgrave, which made it slightly less enjoyable for me.

Terence Rattigan adapted his acclaimed one-act play about a humorless professor at a British school for boys realizing some awful truths about his life on the eve of his retirement from the institution: his embittered wife holds him in contempt (and has been carrying on an affair with one of his fellow teachers), while the headmaster of the school cannot wait to sweep him under the carpet. Michael Redgrave gives great shading to this lanky man with the puny spirit; though, at times, the actor sounds as if he's just swallowed John Gielgud, he is nothing short of fascinating to watch, even in the climactic moments when this adaptation becomes a curiously showy piece of grandstanding for the character. The relationship between Redgrave's Crocker-Harris and his students is left a bit unclear; they tolerate him and complain behind his back, but we don't sense the sort of give-and-take which would make the finale plausible. Jean Kent (as Mrs. Crocker-Harris, with her condescending eyes), handsome Nigel Patrick, and young Brian Smith are excellent in support. Remade in 1994 with Albert Finney in the lead. **1/2 from ****

Forced to retire from an English school, a professor disliked by his students and colleagues and despised by his wife, comes to the realization that his life has been a failure. Redgrave is superb as the stern, introverted professor, providing a finely nuanced portrait of a man who is proud and devoted to his job, but who also harbors regrets about his decisions in life. Also excellent are Kent as his cruel wife, Patrick as a sympathetic colleague, and young Smith as a kind student who feels sorry for the professor. This is an incredibly poignant film based on Rattigan's play. Veteran director Asquith pushes all the right emotional buttons but does not wallow in sentimentality.

I was 15 and studying the play for GCE exams in the late '60s whilst at boarding school; in a place not totally disassociated in my mind's eye from the setting of the play. It evoked sympathy and attachment within me because of the parallels within it and my own situation. We were told not to watch the film if it came on television as it would or might change our perception of the play in its written form. I happened to be in Maidstone one Saturday afternoon and noticed that it was the second film on at a local flea-pit. as I was always looking for shortcuts in ways to learn (lazy) I ignored the remonstration not to see the film and went in. Having read the play six or seven times and even had an opportunity to act the play within a class setting; I established myself as a critical observer. I was not ready for the absolute impact that it had on me, here were the characters of my imagination and reality acting out this story to which I was so attached, in a manner and style to which I knew to be square and true with my own perception. I will not re-hash the plot as others have done a superb job of that, but will add that this film has a pace and acting precision seen only but a few times, and then to no greater effect than is seen here. Redgrave's performance is flawless, the supporting cast are absolutely perfect and I can think of none who could have improved it by their presence. I left the cinema in shock; returning to the school numb from the experience and the knowledge that I just had to share the fact I had seen it; I came clean and told the head English master (born in 1898), he gated me for a month, and then asked if I enjoyed it, I gushed about all of it and how it had increased my understanding of the tragedy and ultimate renaissance of Crocker Harris. Strangely the love of this play and the admission of my transgression created a strong bond between myself and this crotchety old teacher; even ironically to his lending me a copy of the "Browning Version". This is a great movie, a true work of cinematic genius. The movie is available on DVD so you have no excuse.